Stanford beats Notre Dame 45-38

Offensive fireworks galore as neither team can stop a score

November 29, 2009|By Brian Hamilton, Tribune reporter

PALO ALTO, Calif. — In the corner of a half-full stadium, Golden Tate flapped his wings and gums and bounced on his toes. His Notre Dame teammates then surged to the front and bounded onto the Stanford Stadium turf. Behind them, a hobbled, embattled coach in a gray hoodie walked out last.

There were no interlocked arms and moments worthy of weepy close-ups at the beginning of the end Saturday. The time for groundswells -- symbolic or actually relevant to on-field performance -- had passed. The Irish were playing their last regular-season game, almost assuredly the last time Charlie Weis would coach them in one.

So after an agonizing month of heartbreak and black eyes and media blackouts, all that was left was a game that was just an end, a punctuation with no exclamation.

The Irish ended up 45-38 losers to Stanford on a 4-yard touchdown run by Toby Gerhart in the final minute in a full-throttle race to test scoreboard capacity, blowing another double-digit lead and eradicating Weis' slim hope to return and prolonging a miserable month.

The final score, really, was the only mystery here. Weis' departure is expected within days, maybe hours, of the Irish's early-morning return to South Bend, Ind., Sunday.

The start of the finish was indeed head-spinning Saturday. Before kickoff came another cannon shot of a rumor, a CBS report that Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops could be on a plane to South Bend as soon as Sunday. Predictably, it was no mere brush fire for Irish fans.

Within minutes, Swarbrick doused that inferno.

"Any version of anything you hear about a contact with a coach is absolutely wrong," Swarbrick said. "We haven't talked to anybody, we haven't authorized anybody to talk to anybody, it's simply not true. Any version of it -- you don't have to ask me about A, B, C or D, not one of them is true."

Then the real chaos ensued. Notre Dame's Theo Riddick fumbled on the first offensive snap, leading to a Gerhart touchdown run. Then Stanford's Tyler Gaffney fumbled on a punt return, leading to a Tate touchdown. All within the first six minutes.

The onslaught didn't stop. Notre Dame got an 18-yard touchdown catch from Michael Floyd, a David Ruffer field goal and a 78-yard catch-and-run score from Tate. Stanford was slightly less efficient with two Nate Whitaker field goals and an Owen Marecic 1-yard touchdown plunge.

In all, it was 410 yards of offense combined in the first half alone, 6.4 yards per play between the two teams, resulting in a 24-20 halftime edge for the Irish.

Little changed after the break, with Floyd catching a 46-yard touchdown on a reverse flea-flicker out of the Wildcat formation on the Irish's first possession. Stanford duly followed by gashing its way to a Gerhart 10-yard touchdown.

Stanford would get an actual defensive stop and charge down the field, only to settle for a field goal that cut the Irish lead to 31-30 one play into the fourth quarter. Then Tate worked some more magic, catching a pass on one side of the field and then rambling to a 28-yard score on the other side, extending Notre Dame's lead to 38-30 with 13 minutes left.

Then, on fourth-and-4 from the Irish 18, Gerhart hits Ryan Whelan on a touchdown pass and the Cardinal quarterback Andrew Luck hit Jim Dray for the two-point conversion and a 38-38 tie.

All of it was prologue, really, to the drama about to ensue at the top of the program.

"We'll engage in the evaluation in earnest following this game and we'll go from there," Swarbrick said Saturday.